LiftToDrag Ratio
by halfeatenmoon
Summary: Kyon wasn't that surprised when he ended up with a place at the same university as Haruhi, and getting a student apartment together in Nagoya just seemed like the most sensible thing to do. Until one morning when Kyon wakes up with a pair of wings.
1. Chapter 1

I had never had particularly strong feelings about the idea of going to university. I drifted through school not caring very much about anything, or ever putting in much of an effort, with little thought about what would come afterwards. Nevertheless, by the end of my third year in high school, I had managed to submit applications to several universities and to my surprise, one of them offered me a place.

At first, I was surprised that my dull applications had been appealing enough for any institution to want to include me in the ranks of their graduates. Having been granted this opportunity that I didn't really deserve, I was determined to make the best of it, and apply myself to tertiary study at this second-rate university with a zeal I had never shown before. I would rise to the top of the class and do my family proud!

This newfound studiousness lasted for about a fortnight, during which I took detailed notes in every class and spent a great deal of my time doing extra research in the library. A month later, the only time I seemed to spend working was a couple of days before an essay was due, when I barely left the desk in my shabby student apartment and became an expert on both the common and the rarer varieties of energy drink available in the convenience stores of outer Nagoya.

"Hey, Kyon! Do you have any beer in here? We're all out in… wait, are you _still_ working?"

Haruhi tripped into my shoebox of a bedroom/study and draped her arms over my shoulders, breathing hot, beer-scented breath onto my ear. _She_, of course, had finished all her assignments weeks ago, as she always had at school, and she would probably receive excellent marks despite having spent less time working on them than me.

I was a lot less surprised that I'd been accepted into university once I realised that Haruhi had gotten herself a place at the same institution. Itsuki had responded to this discovery with the simple comment "Excellent. Now we can ensure that somebody will be there to keep an eye on her." I wondered what they would have done to keep an eye on Haruhi if I had decided not to attend university at all, but he simply smiled mysteriously and returned to sipping his coffee, leaving me wondering whether I really had anywhere near as much control over my own life as I thought I did.

I was surprised that Haruhi wanted to go to a second-rate school in a city as boring as Nagoya, but she told me that she wanted to go to a place where she could 'experience university life to the fullest'. I still didn't know why Nagoya was supposed to be the ideal place to do this, but she was certainly doing her best to live _her_ idea of what university life should be – living in a cheap, rundown apartment, making new friends every week and drinking a _lot_ of beer.

As you may have guessed by now, Haruhi and I are sharing the same shabby student habitation. This was a situation that I never even bothered trying to resist. If I had, I'm sure that Haruhi would have secured an apartment with a spare room a month before classes began, and I would be refused a place to live by every landlord in town until I was finally forced to room with her. But as two friends both living in a strange town, and without too much money in our pockets, this solution was too obvious to ignore.

Despite living together, though, Haruhi and I haven't been as close as we used to be before we came here. It was a little strange to find that while the only thing separating us was a thin wall that seemed to be made of cardboard, we didn't spend all that much of our free time together. It wasn't as though we fought over household tasks. I'd expected us to argue over that a lot more, over who did the washing or someone leaving a dirty frying pan in the sink after making eggs for breakfast, but as housemates we got along almost too well. It's just that while I expected university to be just like high school, Haruhi had raced ahead of me, making new friends and finding a whole new world for herself in Nagoya. Not that she was making any supernatural trouble – she had been quieter in that respect than I had ever seen her. Her adventures were entirely of the normal human variety.

They just didn't involve me any more.

"No drinks in here, Haruhi. Just me studying." I tried to push her away but she wouldn't budge. She rarely came into my room, let alone tried to touch me. The new friends she'd brought home tonight must be pretty heavy drinkers.

"Hey, those are drinks…"

I slapped her hand away as she tried to reach for the line of cans at the back of my desk. "Those aren't for you. They're energy drinks."

"Well, I could do with something to pick me up after all that beer."

"I need those so I can stay up and finish studying!"

"Shut up! It's against the rules of the SOS Brigade's secret undercover hideaway not to share!"

It wasn't against the rules when her music class gave her a whole chocolate cake for her birthday. "It's not much of an undercover hideaway when you keep bringing people here, and… hey! Not that one! That's imported!"

She ignored me, as usual, and popped the top of a tall, thin can, taking an experimental sip. Trust her to pick the most expensive one. "Hey, this is really good! Why have you been keeping this from me, Kyon?"

"Because it costs more than the others, obviously." She was studying the label now, and suddenly gripped the front of my shirt. "Kyon, have you read this? This drink will give you _wings_!"

"It's just an advertising slogan…"

"It's bad enough that you kept me from something so delicious, but to hide something as interesting as this from your Chief is criminal! Absolutely criminal! You deserve the death penalty! But because I'm a generous leader, I'll give you a more lenient punishment. Later." She suddenly drank the whole of the rest of the can and then waited for a moment. She looked at the can, disappointed, and then looked back at me. "It didn't work."

"It's probably going to make you even more energetic now, so I'd appreciate it if you'd get out of my room and annoy someone else when that happens."

"But I don't have wings!" She hiccupped. "Kyon, we have to hunt down the liars who make this drink and make them _pay_!"

"That's going to be difficult, Haruhi. I'm pretty sure they live in America or England or something." I took the empty can out of her hand and pushed myself out of the desk chair in order to shove her out the door. "Go back to your friends and we'll take on the Red Bull Corporation in the morning." If you can even get up in the morning, that is.

She charged down the short hallway to where her friends were still heavily indulging in their beer, and I sat down at my desk again to try to get to the end of that essay. I would have finished it in half an hour if Haruhi hadn't interrupted my concentration. Now I had to remember what I had been planning, gather all my references again, and it would probably take me an hour at least. After working on it all day, I felt like I was just about ready to pass out.

I had one can of Red Bull left. I had been thinking of saving it for a more desperate occasion, since it was one of the better ones. But on the other hand, now that Haruhi had discovered my stash and apparently developed a taste for my most expensive imported drink, maybe I'd better drink it now, before she could finish that one off, too.

When I fell into bed an hour and a half later, Haruhi's party was still going strong. I'd drunk the whole can, finished my essay and just managed to pull myself into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Despite the amount of taurine still in my bloodstream and the volume of the noise coming from down the hall, with a finished essay ready to hand in to my tutor tomorrow, there was nothing to keep me from a long, satisfying sleep.

I woke the next morning face down in bed, my face buried in a cushion. The sun was well and truly up, and Haruhi was still asleep. She probably would be for a while yet, and I suspected that it wouldn't be a pleasant awakening for her when it came. Nevertheless, there was still plenty of time before I had to hand in my essay, so I could afford to take my time, have a shower and make myself a proper breakfast. It was a glorious feeling not to have to keep writing outside the faculty office before the very deadline!

But despite the fact that I had worked hard and deserved to hand in a finished essay on time, for once, fate had other ideas for me that morning. When I tried to roll over in bed, I felt a sharp, wrenching pain in my back. When I shouted at the pain and tried to push myself out of bed, the room was suddenly thrown into chaos, first when my belongings seemed to fly off my desk and shelves onto the floor, and then when I panicked and whirled around, trying to see what was causing all the trouble. As I managed to land on my feet, though, and tried to back towards the door, I was struck by a sudden pain again, not quite on my back but somehow _behind _it, and I dropped to my knees with a groan.

Feathers, I realised, as the pain-induced haze over my vision began to clear. There were feathers in the air, on the floor, on my hands. And there was a weight on my back that hadn't been there before. Slowly, I pushed myself back so that I was kneeling on the floor. I had a sensation of being cramped, this time, though not of pain, even though I wasn't really near the wall. Tentatively, I craned an arm over my shoulder to investigate the skin of my bare back.

Well, that explained the cramped feeling, the unexpected pain and the way I had thrown all my belongings around the room apparently without touching them. It wasn't a thief, an attacker or a Haruhi-created beast invading my home – although Haruhi was without a doubt the one to blame for my current predicament. No, the chaos and the pain were all caused by me; or rather, the new appendages that I now found sprouting from my back. It was hard to be very adept at using limbs that I had only just acquired, fully formed, during the night, I managed to manoeuvre my newest features around and in front of my torso so that I could get an idea of their size. There was no mirror in my room, and the last thing I wanted was for Haruhi to see me like this, so I wasn't about to sneak into her room. The situation was worse than I thought. By the time I had extended them as far as they would go, I was amazed that I hadn't either broken through a wall or broken a bone before now.

Most people would be shocked, and probably terrified, to discover that they had suddenly sprouted an enormous pair of feathered wings. It my case, it elicited only a resigned sigh.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't as though I didn't _want _to see the SOS Brigade again. At a time like this, I certainly didn't regret calling them. It was just that I didn't really think through the space constraints. I couldn't leave the house looking like this, and I couldn't expect them to stand outside and shout to me through the window. Having them stand in the entrance space or the kitchen meant a greater risk of Haruhi seeing them when she finally woke up. But with all three of them in my bedroom, along with my brand new wings, there was absolutely no space to move without breaking things. I was having enough trouble keeping from doing that even _before_ they arrived.

"So you just woke up like this?" Itsuki peered at the wings curiously.

"Yes. I had that conversation with Haruhi about eight hours ago now, and then I woke up with wings."

"I see."

They all stared at me for a moment. Mikuru in particular seemed more interested in the wings themselves than working out how they got there or how to make them go away.

"So, can you do anything about them?" I was particularly hoping that Nagato would be able to help. To my disappointment, she shook her head.

"My powers are no use in this situation either." That's a given. I always thought espers would be useful, but Itsuki usually isn't. "It seems that the only way to rectify this situation is to discover why Suzumiya created it. Is this the first time that she's created any strange occurrences since you've been in Nagoya?"

"As far as I know."

"What could have made her feel the need to do such a thing when she's been quiet for so long?"

"I told you, she stole my drink and thought it would give her wings, and did I mention that she was very drunk?"

Itsuki smiled and nodded. The most annoying thing was how calm they all were. That, and the way Mikuru kept reaching out to stroke my feathers when I wasn't looking. Doesn't she realise I can _feel_ it?

"Yes, I understand the immediate circumstances leading up to the event. But why would Suzumiya feel the need to make something strange now?"

I shrugged, an action that required a lot more energy now. "I don't know. She seems fine. She has the exciting university life that she wanted. Parties every night and so forth."

While Itsuki thought that over, I glanced sideways at Mikuru, who was muttering 'fluffy' and trying to sidle under my wings again. To my discomfort, the three of them had arrived much more quickly than I expected. I hadn't even had time to work out how to put on a shirt before they turned up. It's not that I don't like my body, but I'm not the kind of guy who's comfortable trying to have a normal conversation when I'm naked from the waist up. Especially with two girls and a male of ambiguous sexual orientation. Especially when one of those girls keeps cooing and trying to touch me.

"Hang on," I said, in a moment of realisation. "Did you _all_ move to Nagoya?"

Itsuki and Nagato looked at each other; Mikuru looked at the floor.

"I'm not angry, I just want to know why you didn't _tell_ me."

"We thought Suzumiya might find it a bit suspicious if all five of us wound up here. She brought you with her, so we agreed that if the rest of us had a choice, we should stay under the radar."

"You've been very subtle. Well done. But this is _Haruhi_ we're talking about. She doesn't find anything suspicious unless she wants to."

"Yes, well…"

"I mean, she'd probably take it as proof that the SOS Brigade are destined by fate to stay together and conquer the world."

I ignored Itsuki's attempt to reply as I flapped my wings gently to stop Mikuru from playing with the soft downy feathers just under the bone. It tickled.

"Whatever, Itsuki. You could have at least told me you were around."

Mikuru looked guilty, and I realised it wasn't just because she kept playing with my wings. "It's not that we didn't want to see you, Kyon, not at all! We just thought you would prefer… that is, at this stage we agreed that it would be better if…"

She trailed off and stepped back next to Itsuki. I looked at him, but he also seemed mildly uncomfortable. It was Nagato who finally said, "We believed that you and Suzumiya Haruhi may prefer to be left in privacy."

Ah.

"You thought that you should leave us alone so that we could get closer? You thought we'd want to make the most of this time to… date?"

"Isn't that why you got a house together?" Mikuru asked, uncertainly.

I laughed. "In case you haven't noticed, we have separate rooms. We're only staying together because it's convenient. Nothing romantic at all."

Mikuru and Itsuki exchanged a look, and I started to feel worried. "It's just that by the time we got to the end of school, you both seemed pretty interested in each other…"

"Yeah, well, university's a different matter." The wings were heavy; I wasn't used to carrying this much weight. I wanted to sit down, but there was no space anywhere in my tiny room to do it. "Things are different now that we're at university. Haruhi has way more exciting things to do than hang around with me."

They were looking worried now. Itsuki had a very serious look on his face. "Kyon, are you okay with that? It sounds kind of like a problem to me. If you and Haruhi aren't getting along, that could have major implications for her stability."

"We're not _fighting!_" I ran my fingers through my hair. "She's just been doing a lot of different things, that's all. She's met all these new people, and it's a new town, so she's having this really exciting new life, you know? So she doesn't have all that much time to spend with me. And let's face it, I'm not as smart as she is, so I end up spending a whole lot more time studying, which to Haruhi is pretty boring."

"Kyon…" Mikuru was looking at me sympathetically, which almost made things worse. "I'm sorry."

"You're the once chosen by Suzumiya, Kyon!" Itsuki's mind was on other things. "She can't get bored with you. Because then she won't be the one _chosen_ by you. But then who would it be? Is it someone else?" He looked at Mikuru, then at Nagato. "If someone else is her chosen person now, we have to find them right away, before something else happens!"

Nagato blinked him. Mikuru coughed into her hand and tilted her head towards me. Itsuki still stared at me for a moment before he realised what they meant.

"Oh. Right. I guess it's still you, Kyon."

"Lucky me. I'm _so_ glad she gave me these wings to prove she hasn't found a new best friend."

"Mmm." Itsuki didn't seem to notice my sarcasm. "But you have to try to stay close to Suzumiya. It's not good for you two if you're not getting along."

"I don't know what you expect me to do. I didn't _try_ to make her get bored with me."

It wasn't what I wanted to happen. It was just the way things turned out. We came to Nagoya and in all the excitement of unpacking and setting up the house and then starting university, something changed while I wasn't looking and Haruhi was a whole different person.

But it's not as though this is what I wanted to happen.

"Still," said Itsuki, frowning, "I think you should try to do _something_ to get closer to her again. We don't know what might happen if…"

I cut him off. "Things seem to be going along fine. Really. Haruhi's been fine since we've been here. In fact, I think she's the most stable that I've ever seen her. It could be _better_ for her if I'm just a housemate instead of being her best friend or… or something else. It seems to be working out really well. Since we came here, and since our relationship became like this, she hasn't made any trouble at all."

All three of them looked pointedly at the appendages just behind me.

"Well. Except for today, I suppose."

Mikuru bit her lip. "What are you going to do about the wings?"

"I'm so glad you asked! It's great how you're all concerned for my welfare."

Itsuki frowned at me. "Sarcasm isn't really helping."

"You could try to care about me, for once, instead of Haruhi."

"We're trying now, aren't we?"

I rubbed my forehead. By all rights, I should have had more sleep than this. "The only person who can get rid of them is Haruhi, right? So I'll just have to try to stay hidden until… well, stay hidden for a while and hope it goes away. I don't know how long I can stay here."

"Do you need anything right now?"

"Yes. Definitely. I need someone to hand in my essay for me. I don't think I'll fit through the faculty office doors right now."

Nagato had stepped forward with a hand outstretched to take my essay, and I reached for the desk to pick it up. When I turned around to hand it to her, though, her mind seemed to be distracted, and she had a faraway look in her eyes.

"Are you okay, Nagato?"

A moment later, I realised why her eyes had glazed over, as Haruhi's voice filtered through, distantly, from the other end of our apartment – not very far away at all. "Nagato? Kyon, is Nagato here?"

Strangely enough, my first instinct was to hide my friends.

"The futon cupboard!" I hissed at them, as quietly as I could, herding them towards the alcove. It was just lucky that I hadn't started to pack up my bedding, or there'd be no space, but as it was I could just fit all of them. I was dimly aware that one of the advantages of having an enormous pair of wings was that it made it much easier to shove three people into a cupboard simultaneously. Then I remembered that the downside to having a gigantic pair of wings was that it was really hard for _me_ to hide when my hungover housemate came looking for me.

But I barely had time to even think about hiding when a sleepy Haruhi opened the bedroom door and stood blinking at me, and my brand new limbs. What are you supposed to do in a situation like this?

"Haruhi. Good morning. How's your hangover?"

She just blinked at me. "You have wings."

"Yeah. Costume party at the university. Wouldn't you rather be in bed right now?"

For a moment she wavered, and I thought that maybe this plan was actually going to work. But no matter how much she'd changed, Haruhi would always let the voice of curiousity win out over the need for sleep, and she stumbled forward to catch herself by grabbing onto the shoulder joint of my right wing. Her right hand dropped onto my chest and slid down a little. Under normal circumstances that would be weird, but then, under normal circumstances, I would be wearing a shirt.

And I wouldn't have wings.

"You have wings," she said, bluntly.

"Yeah, like I said…"

"No, you have actual wings." She slid her hand along the wing to where it joined my back, and although it ruffled my feathers, I also felt a sensual pleasure that hadn't been there when Mikuru was toying with my feathers earlier. I wanted to groan, I wanted to stretch my wings, push into Haruhi's touch, because that felt _good_. It was the only thing that had, today.

"They're... uh." It was really hard to concentrate while she was doing that. "They're really good props. I know some people at the art college."

The wings gave me away, though; when she buried her fingers in the downy feathers under the bone, one of them twitched and flapped in a way that no prop could ever imitate. She didn't pull her hands away, like Mikuru, just ducked so that I didn't hit her over the head, and caught herself with a hand on my shoulder, still stroking the feathers, but more gently. This time it just made me want to sit down, and maybe fall asleep.

"Don't bullshit me," she said, glaring up at me. The hungover drowsiness was mostly gone from her voice, replaced with her usual imperative tone, at odds with the soothing effect her fingers were having on me. "These are actual real wings. The drink gave you wings. Why don't I have wings?"

There was a tension in the room that only I could feel. There wasn't a sound from the futon cupboard, but I could hear them all holding their breaths.

But what was I supposed to do? She had seen me. There were worse things she could see, things that would be harder to hide, or make her react more dramatically, but that mattered less than the fact that something had happened at all. It didn't matter whether the wall was blown away or whether there was just a tiny crack, as long as she could see through. Haruhi had seen something that she made, and there was nothing I could say that could make her forget it.

I could try, of course, and normally I would. I probably should have. But instead I did something I hadn't done in a long time, and just said what I felt.

"Why do you _want_ wings?"

She blinked at me. "Because they're cool!"

"They're not _cool_," I hissed. "They're heavy, they take up half my room and I keep knocking things over. I can't go outside because people will see and point and then I'll be a freak celebrity on magazine covers all the time. Which pisses me off because I really want to find out if I can fly."

I folded the wings back, as close to my back as I could so that she'd stop touching them, and sat down on my futon. I was too tired for this, and it was only nine in the morning.

Haruhi looked down at me with an odd expression on her face. For a moment I thought she was going to say 'sorry', but that didn't make sense. She didn't know that she'd made this happen, and even if she did, it was Haruhi Suzumiya. She didn't say sorry.

But she did say "Is there anything I can do?"

"You can leave me alone."

She scowled at me. "Anything I can do to _help_. Since you can't go outside."

"My paper's due today," I said at last, pointing to the desk. I'd gotten the papers back together and stapled them together so that they couldn't fly apart if I accidentally started flapping again.

"Right," she said, and picked them up. "I'll take these over to the university."

"It has to go to the..."

"I know which office it goes to. And I know your student number, I can fill out the cover form for you." She wouldn't meet my eye. "And then I'll come right back."

"Don't you have classes today?"

"Yes," she said, before she shut the bedroom door behind her, "But I don't want to leave you here alone all day."

As soon as she left, the room I could hear shuffling from the futon cupboard, but I held the door shut until I'd heard her key turn in the front door. The three of them tumbled out and sprawled at my feet. Normally I'd laugh, but I was resigned to having a horrible day and it was going to take more than a simple accident to make me laugh.

"Go on, then." I crossed my arms. "How many things did I do wrong there? Is the world going to end?"

"I don't know. You probably did the best thing that you possibly could, really." It was Itsuki who touched my shoulder, and it was oddly comforting. "We should get out of here before she comes back, but we'll talk about what to do and send you an email once we've thought about it."

The girls were already heading out, after some quick goodbyes, but Itsuki lingered for a moment. He put a hand on my shoulder again. "Nobody blames you, you know."

"That's a bit rich coming from the guy who always told me that _I_ had to save the day."

Itsuki smiled a bit sadly. "You needed guidance back then. I trust you to do the right thing now. You've never gotten it wrong before."

"You're not going to tell me what to do this time?"

"Oh, we'll all go and call our superiors and then have a meeting to discuss what we should do next. But I don't see how any of them will come up with an easy solution to this. You're in as good a position as anyone to understand what to do. You might even know better than us."

"Better than the Integrated Data Thought Entity? Or the time travellers? Don't they already know what's best since they've seen it all before?"

Itsuki laughed. "That might be true. But knowing _more_ doesn't mean knowing _best_. And I don't think any of us can claim to know more than you do about Haruhi, now that you're living with her."

I might know how late she is on her bills, but I don't think living with Haruhi has given me much more insight on the working of her mind than I had before. If anything, I feel like we're more distant than ever. And the more we talked about this, the more I started to dread seeing Haruhi come through that door again. "If you all helped, do you think I can move out of here before Haruhi gets back?"

Itsuki laughed. "Nice try, Kyon. You know how I said we weren't going to tell you what to do? We all agreed that there's one thing you definitely have to do. _Stay here._"

"If Haruhi already knows I have wings, I don't think it's going to matter if anyone else does."

"No, but can you imagine what she'll do if she comes back from the university, having seen you with wings sprouting out of your back just now, and finds you gone?"

I couldn't imagine what she would do, but I could imagine that it would probably just land us all in a bigger mess than we were already. With a sigh – and I think I deserved to sigh as much as I liked today – I sank back down to the floor. "Fine. I'll wait. We'll talk. But I can't guarantee that I'll come up with a perfect solution for this one. I might just make things worse."

"You'll do your best. That's all I ever ask of you. And your best has always been very, _very_ good," he said, warmly. Nagato and Mikuru were calling for him, but he still hesitated at the door. "Take care of yourself, too, Kyon. I know that it seems like all we talk about is Haruhi, but our lives don't revolve around keeping her stable. We all want you to be happy, too."

It was easy enough for Itsuki to say that. I was pretty sure that Haruhi was the only person that Haruhi cared about. All of a sudden, she knew I had wings, and now I had to stay here for her on pain of terrible things happening. If normal, boring old Kyon had moved out of the house yesterday, I doubt she would have even noticed.


	3. Chapter 3

I thought about running.

It was a strange how sensible it seemed, in the long hour that I was trapped in the room, unable to even pace up and down. All I could do was stretch my limbs a little to ease the cramp - just moving about the house was difficult. Perhaps it was because I was confined to such a small space, unable to make even the slightest movement, that running away seemed like such a sensible idea. Or perhaps it was because there was literally nothing I could do except think.

I could disappear, and Haruhi would never know what had happened. I'd leave no note, nothing, or perhaps a fake one, something that would fool her somehow. She had seen what had happened to me, but she had no way to prove it, not even to herself. I could forge a note to the landlord, suggesting that I'd been evicted! Perhaps even followed by one from me, asking her to deliver my essay for me while I hurried to find somewhere else to live. Or perhaps I had enough time to set up the apartment to look as though I had never lived there at all. With no reason to believe otherwise, what could she really do?

How else could I erase the fact that Haruhi had seen me like this? She had finally found what she'd always wanted, something that defied the laws of nature, and by the logic Itsuki had always used, the safety catch on her powers was now off for good. How else could I keep the world from going completely mad except by trying to change her memory, and convince her that it had never happened at all?

What if trying to trick her just led her to turn the world into an even crazier place?

The window in my room faced the east, so there was nowhere I could escape from the sunlight that was now filtering through. I kept the blinds drawn, but several rays still managed to pierce my eyes. All I could do was turn away and let the sun fall warm on my bare back. It was hard to believe that it was still morning. The world hand changed forever, it a way that could bring about its end, and yet the day had barely begun.

I needed a better plan, but the others had left me with nothing. The only options I could see were to try to keep up an obvious lie, or to leave and tell Haruhi that this had never really happened. The first would fail, that was obvious. The second option was an unknown quantity. Trying to make my way around in the world like this would be difficult enough, but what effect was fooling with Haruhi's memory going to have on her? Would her confusion made the effects of her powers work, turning the world into a more and more unstable place?

And even if they were successful, they all had the same end result for me. I'd finally gotten Haruhi to really talk to me, for the first time since university had started, and no matter what I did, success would mean a swift end to that. It almost seemed worth running away just to see if she'd follow me. But in the end, all I did was wait. I wasn't brave enough to find out whether she though I was worth chasing.

By the time Haruhi returned in the late afternoon, I'd expected something else in the world to have shifted by now. Something in her mind had to have changed from seeing this way, something that would forever alter the way the world worked. Any moment, I thought, I'd feel the ground shifting under my feet, or look out the window and see a dragon flying by. But when I heard her keys in the door again, the world was still more or less the same place it had been when I woke up.

She padded softly into my room in her socks and handed me a cup of coffee and a bread roll, just like that. Then she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, and just waited. No questions, no touching, no grandiose declarations of her greatness – just patience. I watched her the whole time I was eating, but she didn't seem about to do or say anything drastic at all. She just sat there quietly, watching me right back.

"So," she said, at last, once I'd finished eating. "How do you feel?"

It wasn't the question I expected. "Fine. I mean, not fine. Terrible, I guess. I can't go out. I don't know what I'm going to do with these things. I'm going to fail this semester. " It was almost funny that the first thing I thought of was university.

She looked at me, then the wings, her eyes following their curve from my shoulders to the elbow joint well above my head to the longer flight feathers draped over the floor.

"I can understand that," she said, softly, when her eyes found their way back to mine. "It's a shame. They're so beautiful. But I can understand why you'd want to get rid of them."

The thought dashed through my mind that maybe it wouldn't be so bad, if Haruhi were still here to look after me. If the wings meant she'd pay attention to me.

"There must be a way to fix this," she said, getting up and walking around me in a full circle, looking at the wings from all angles. "We'll figure this out together, Kyon! I don't want you stuck inside being miserable for the rest of your life."

Of course. Haruhi doesn't need the burden of me being stuck and needing her to do everything for me.

"Don't be an idiot," she rolled her eyes and flopped to the floor in front of me again, suddenly looking a lot more like herself. "They're so cool! I'm really jealous of you. And even if they weren't awesome, as _if_ I'd be annoyed about having to look after you. You're my friend. I'm trying to help you get rid of them because they're making you _sad_, that's all."

It was odd to think of the wings making me sad, as though having them attached to my shoulders had somehow changed the chemistry of my mind so that I could never be happy again. That wasn't the way it worked.

"Uh-huh." Haruhi was unimpressed by my philosophical digression. "Let's just get to the point. How the hell did you get wings in the first place? Why don't _I_ have wings?" she added, as an afterthought. "You got any more cans of that stuff?"

"You know energy drinks can't _literally_ make you fly, right?"

She hesitated for a moment, then gave me a small, wry smile. "I know. I really do, Kyon, I just... it's nice to make believe it could be true."

It was something I'd never, ever seen Haruhi do before – maturely, gracefully accepting that no amount of wanting would ever make her fantasies come true. How had she grown up so much without me noticing? As admirable as it was, it would almost have made me sad to see her give up on those dreams the way I had long before I met her.

Before I could comment on her change of heart, though, she banished the wistful expression from her face and clapped her hands together, businesslike. "So! How did you really get wings?"

"I don't know. If I knew, don't you think I would have done something about them by now?"

She looked at me for a moment, her expression unreadable, and I wondered for a panicked moment whether somehow, impossibly, she knew that I was lying.

"Okay then, if you say so," she said, dropping it without further comment. "We don't know where they came from. We still have a couple of ways to try to deal with them, right?"

"Right."

"Obviously, we can try to cut them off."

I'm sure I must have winced visibly - I could _feel_ the wings close protectively around me - and Haruhi snickered.

"I didn't literally mean _you and I_ could cut them off," she grinned. "I meant finding a surgeon who'd be willing to do it. If we were lucky we could get someone to come here so you didn't even have to go out where people can see you, although we might have to shift you to somewhere with more space."

I really didn't like that idea. As new and foreign as the wings were, they were still _my body_.

"Fair enough. Can't blame you. It'd probably have to be a pretty dodgy surgeon to agree to that." Haruhi nodded. "Okay then, there's obviously something odd going on with your body for them to appear so suddenly, so there's always the option of finding some biologists to look into it. There might even be someone at the university who would... no?"

I was shaking my head before she even finished talking. "No. We can't do that. They won't want me fixed, they'll want to keep me this way so they can write groundbreaking research papers and get lots of grant money. You know how scientists think." Or at least she should. She spent enough time drinking with them.

"Well, okay, you're probably right." She nodded again. "That _does_ bring us back to the surgery option, though."

"But I don't like that either. Anyway, a surgeon probably won't be any better, they'll want to study me and write me up in a medical journal too."

"Well unless you want _me_ to cut them off for you, I don't see any other option, and you don't like that idea, do you?"

The situation was starting to feel so hopeless that for a moment, it really _did_ seem like the best option. But no, I couldn't possibly let Haruhi hack off a part of my body! What was I thinking?

"I'm sorry, Kyon, that's all I've been able to come up with," she said, starting to look annoyed. "We can try to think of something else but I don't have any other answers right now, unless you want to spend the rest of your life hiding in people's spare rooms."

"Of course I don't!" I snapped. "But there has to be a better answer! I can't do any of these things!"

"Then tell me how you got them!" she snapped back.

"I told you, I don't know!"

She sat there with her mouth open for a moment, just breathing. She swallowed.

"You do know," she said, her voice wavering, which on its own would be enough to throw me off guard. "Or your name isn't John Smith."


	4. Chapter 4

For a few moments, all I could do was stare. I recovered as quickly as I could, and said "What are you talking about? My name's never been John Smith," but I knew I'd already given too much away.

"Yes you are," she said, even more certain now. "You _are_. You're the same John Smith I met all those years ago. It took me so long to realise, but it really is you."

I suppose, if I really tried, I could have found a way to deny it. But I was tired. For the first time ever, I had to do this covering up face-to-face with Haruhi, and without a single other, wiser person to help me. And frankly, there was absolutely nothing I could say that would fool her now. So instead, I just sighed.

"How long have you known?"

For a moment, she looked triumphant, that cocky, satisfied look she always got when she knew she'd won, before she hugged her knees to her chest and her smile turned more coy. "I don't think I _knew_, exactly, not until just now. But I started wondering a long time ago. I always felt like I'd met you before, somewhere. It took me a while to remember the name 'John Smith', and even when I did I thought no, that couldn't be you. John Smith would have left North High by the time I got there. Except one day I thought, no, John did say that he knew time travellers, and aliens and espers too. So maybe he really could be Kyon."

It didn't really answer my question, but it was enough to make me think twice. She had known that I was John Smith for a long time now, it seemed. Long enough to think it through, and confident enough to ask me about it. And yet, the world hasn't ended. If anything, she was calmer than ever before.

Yet even though I hadn't noticed Haruhi's new sense of maturity in her everyday life, between the way she held wild parties every night and at the same time barely spoke to me, it was apparent to me just from looking at her. She was excited, I could see it in her eyes, she was just bursting to ask me all the hundreds of questions in her head, but she didn't. She just sat there, restraining herself, until I was ready to talk.

"What now?" Stupid question. I just didn't know what to do.

"Well," said Haruhi, carefully, "You could tell me how you got those wings and then _maybe_ we can find a way to fix it."

Realistically, given all Haruhi had seen and all she'd figured out so far, there can't have been much more to lose by telling her that everything happened because she willed it. But I clung desperately to the hope that if I held out and didn't give away that one, vital piece of knowledge, there would still somehow be a way to turn all of this back.

"Don't you want to know about John Smith? How I travelled through time? Or about the alien, time traveller and esper I said I was friends with? And there are so many more things I could tell you." I was genuinely warming to my topic now. "There are so many things you still don't know about, Haruhi. You wouldn't believe the adventures I've had. And you'll probably kill me when you find out what I missed out on."

"I bet I will," said Haruhi, with a grin, "But we can do all that now. Together." She took my hand. "Just as soon as we figure out what's happened to you and how we can fix it."

I'm supposed to keep a secret. That's always been my job, in a way, and I've been doing it for four years. Seven if you count my adventure back in time as John Smith. Keeping Haruhi blind to the truth about her own life had been the main purpose of my existence – no matter how reluctant I was to take responsibility for it – ever since I met her. I'd kept up constant vigilance to protect her, my friends, the entire world, and somewhere along the line I'd fooled myself into thinking I could keep it up forever. It's amazing that it only took a few hours for that network of safety we'd built up to come crumbling down again.

Sorry, Itsuki. You're going to want to kill me later.

"It happened because of you."

Haruhi didn't seem terribly impressed by this answer, but she sat there patiently, waiting for me to go on.

"You have an incredible power, Haruhi. Anything you want becomes reality. You can change the world just by wanting to. I know it sounds impossible, but it's really true."

Her brow was creasing into a frown now. "I don't understand."

"Okay, remember..." I struggled for an example of something that she would actually remember. "Remember way back when we first started the SOS Brigade, and how you wanted a mysterious transfer student to be a member of the club? And a couple of days later Itsuki just turned up? It wasn't a coincidence that he decided to transfer between schools that week. He came because you wanted it. You want things, and they just... happen."

"That's ridiculous," she said, looking at her feet. "I can't do anything like that. I'd _know__ if I could do that sort of thing. I'm not that kind of special person, though."_

All this time, and she still thinks she's not special.

"Okay, how about this one? When we were filming your Mikuru-chan movie for our first culture club, you wanted to shoot a scene in front of cherry blossoms, but it was the wrong season for it. And yet when we went down there, the cherry trees were in full bloom. How do you explain that?"

She looked startled. "It was a freak occurrence."

"Sure, but why? And why was it exactly when you wanted it?"

"But this can't be true." She was frowning at me as though it were my fault. Trust me, Haruhi, if I had any choice in the matter I would have chosen anything but to give you godlike powers.

"Why can't it be true? I suddenly sprouted wings overnight. Is that really any less strange than you being able to make the world whatever you want it to be?"

"Yes," she said, "Because I _can't."_

"But you can."

"But that doesn't make sense! If it's true, well, why _don't I get everything I want? Why is my life so ordinary? If I were special I would __feel like it, wouldn't it? I mean, come on, why haven't I ever met a time traveller?"_

"You have."

She blinked at me, struggling for a moment, and I could see her features slacken with surprise when she realised. "You were telling the truth. All that time ago, that day in the cafe, you were telling the truth about them."

"And the three of them would have been furious with me if they knew," I smiled at her. "Lucky for me that you didn't believe it, or they would have killed me."

"I don't get it. If I make these things happen... if I get everything I want... it doesn't make sense. I _don't get everything I want."_

"I don't know how it works. You probably need to talk to Itsuki to understand this sort of thing, he's better at it than me. It's something to do with your belief in the laws of physics being too strong for you to believe that the things you want are actually real... So you make them real, but you don't know about it. It's kind of complicated, I'm really not the guy who knows about this stuff..."

She was shaking her head. "I don't mean that. I mean, I get what Itsuki means. And it's fantastic that time travellers and aliens really have existed all this time. It's the best!" She didn't seem that excited about it, though. I didn't understand. I thought she'd be tearing around the house with glee by now. This was what she'd always wanted.

"But if it's what I've always wanted, and I always get the things I want, it doesn't make sense because I'm not... well, I never found out about it, but that's one thing, but why don't I..." She twisted a finger in the hem of her skirt. "Why aren't I _happy, then?"_

I just stared at her. What was I supposed to say to that? You have unrealistic standards that the world can never live up to? But it was more than that, I realised it, and still I didn't know how I could possibly respond.

"I need to go," she said, standing up suddenly. "Sorry, I just need to... I need to get out for a while."

"You should..."

"You should stay here. Have a sleep or something."

I didn't want to sleep. I wanted to force her to sit back down next to me and _listen_, and not let her go until I could talk some sense into her, or call Itsuki and get him to fix it, or at least make sure that she wasn't going to go out and do something stupid. But before she'd even left the room, I felt myself growing drowsy, and by the time she was out the door I was sprawled on the floor, too tired to move. The last thing I thought before I drifted away to sleep was that she might not believe that she had any special powers, but she was alrady putting them to scarily effective use.


End file.
